World of Tanks

Posted: 04/29/11

True to its title, World of Tanks is a massively multiplayer online game that glorifies the tanks of the mid-twentieth century, and for a free-to-play title, it offers a surprisingly deep experience that's only expected to get better over the coming months with new content. It's not without a few shortcomings, but does World of Tanks nonetheless satisfy the primal urge to blow up stuff with a big gun?

Your quest to dominate the World of Tanks begins by choosing a starter tank from what eventually turns into a dizzying selection of over 100 American, German, or Soviet war machines. After taking part in a 30-player team-based battle, you can return to the loadout screen to spend your experience points and credits on upgrades, research, or a new tank. If your team wins, you can use the silver coins that you receive to repair your vehicle, buy ammunition, or purchase consumables that come in handy for your crew on the battlefield. That same crew can be trained, which affects how quickly you reload, how precisely you aim, and other performance factors.

As with all free-to-play games, you can get ahead by spending some real-world cash. The main benefit of putting down cash is the opportunity to buy bigger tanks or upgrade an existing tank without endlessly grinding experience. Devoted players can also choose the premium membership option for ten dollars a month, which increases the amount of experience and currency you earn as well as providing the option to form teams with your friends.

The advantages provided by premium content are occasionally alarming, thanks to a flawed matchmaking system. While it usually manages similar, balanced groups for a match, teams created through the subscription plan can throw things off. In the worst scenarios, you're stuck firing hopelessly ineffective shots at godlike machines with your inferior tank. A newbie's hopelessness can be pushed to nightmare levels in battles involving the dreaded SPGs, or "self-propelled guns", which can attack you from so far across the map that you won't have any idea what hit you.

Battles currently revolve exclusively around capturing an enemy base or completely wiping out your 15 opponents across a small selection of maps -- whichever comes first. Repetition is inherent here, but the development team is working on a much deeper campaign mode called Clan Wars, currently testing in Russia, in which you and members of your clan will defend and invade an enormous number of strategic locations on a world map. Until it's released in the next month or so, however, new players should steel themselves for endless rounds of the same combination of team deathmatch and capture the base.

World of Tanks' controls are refreshingly similar to those found in first person shooters, so you'll easily be able to jump into combat if you know the basics. A commendable focus on realism means that gameplay can quickly swing between slow, strategic matches and heart-pounding firefights. That realism includes agonizingly long waits between shots depending on your vehicle and your crew's experience level. Positioning and awareness are hugely important. If an enemy tank is firing at you from behind, you need to wait several seconds for the turret to swivel around before you can return fire. Any damage you sustain can greatly affect gameplay, with turret damage or a wrecked suspension effectively crippling you if you're unable to repair.

There are no respawns in World of Tanks, so if you die early in a game, you have to watch the rest of the tanks slug it out from your smoking heap of metal. The decision works, forcing players to use cover wisely and to rely on team-based strategies instead of the suicide tactics that plague many other multiplayer battlegrounds. If you go out early, you can always exit the match and head back to the loadout menu, where you'll receive the same amount of experience and cash you would have received if you stayed. You can't just join another match with the same tank until the battleground you left has completed, but that doesn't stop you from jumping into another battle with a fresh machine.

Combat is fun, but not without its problems. It's possible to become stuck at the edge of the map, and combat suffers from a particularly frustrating issue that players call "invisible tanks." In some cases this is a bug, but more often it's a player with a powerful Tank Destroyer equipped with a camouflage net. If that's not enough, it's quite clear by this point that Russian tanks possess clear advantages, which could create some severe balance issues down the road.

World of Tanks' modestly attractive visuals are surprising considering the game's free-to-play framework, and it's obvious that time and research have made the tanks themselves visually and structurally similar to their real-life counterparts. Environmental interactivity lets you smash through trees or fences that might be in your way, or even destroy some of the weaker buildings to expose enemy tanks under cover. Sound effects are also satisfying, with ear-shattering shrieks of torn metal and the excited shouts of your crewmen after a scoring a direct hit. All of this takes place in a diverse range of maps including urban, rural, and desert environments. Variety is somewhat limited now with only 12 maps, but more battlefields including historical campaigns are promised to be on the way.

For a free-to-play game, World of Tanks offers a surprising wealth of entertainment, although you may feel the need to fork out a bit of cash for some armor upgrades. The best part of this armored adventure is that enjoying a few rounds of battle doesn't take the time commitment required by other MMOs. You can jump into battle with a fairly competent machine only seconds after downloading the 1.7 gigabyte client. It's not without flaws, but as it stands, World of Tanks is off to a great start with an impressive foundation to build on. And if you're still undecided, it costs nothing to download the full game and try it out for yourself.

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